Stu Mead

Stuart “Stu” Mead (born October 18, 1955) is definitely an American artist who lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Mead was created in Waterloo, Iowa in 1955. He was created with arthrogryposis, a hereditary condition affecting the muscles and joints. Like a teen, Mead was inspired by European painting and subterranean comics, especially individuals of Robert Crumb. He studied art in the College of Northern Iowa before moving together with his parents to England in 1975. He studied printmaking in the Camden arts Center working in london.After coming back to Iowa in 1977, he studied drawing in the College of Iowa, as well as in 1983 gone to live in Minneapolis Minnesota. Later he finished the Minneapolis College of Art and style, where he grew to become knowledgeable about artist and future collaborator Frank Gaard.

Mead’s work includes painting, drawing, printmaking, and producing Zines and art books. His jobs are inspired by popular culture, for example comics, (including Subterranean Comics) British seaside postcards, and cartoons appearing in cheap men’s magazines from the 1950s and early 1960s. Mead also draws inspiration from “high” culture sources like European painting, (especially German modernist painters). Mead cites Picasso and Balthus as getting the finest affect on his artistic practice. Another strong influence is Bruno Bettelheim’s book “The Purposes Of Enchantment,” which explores the Grimm Brothers’ dark fairytales from the Freudian mental perspective. Bettelheim’s analysis of folktales, as well as their utilization of simple, effective archetypes to trigger deep emotional responses informed Mead’s efforts to produce images that engage the viewer immediately and emotionally.

Later, Mead started adding towards the artist zine “Art Police,” which Frank Gaard edited. Mead took part in this publication from 1987 until its final issue in 1994. “Art Police” gave Mead a forum where he could freely explore taboo styles, including adolescent sexuality, bestiality, and scatology. In 1991, Mead, (together with Frank Gaard) started publishing the zine “Man Bag.” An kind of Art Police, the zine focused exclusively on sexual images. In 1993 Mead received the Plant Foundation Artists Fellowship, which permitted a number of journeys to Europe.At the moment, he started a lengthy connection to French art book writer Le Dernier Cri, in addition to with Gallery Endart in Berlin. Le Dernier Cri printed a selection of Man Bag’s six issues in 1999 known as “The Immortal MAN BAG Journal of Art”. In 1994 Mead began a number of works of art according to his sexually explicit sketches that have been exhibited at Endart in Berlin in 1995. His works of art of the period were a topic of “The Late Great Aesthetic Taboos, an essay incorporated included in “Apocalypse Culture II,” the questionable anthology, compiled by Adam Parfrey and printed by Feral House in 2000. Mead gone to live in Berlin in 2000. In 2003, he took part in the exhibition “Do Not Cause Me To Feel Cry,” curated by Georgina Starr at Emily Tsingou Gallery working in london. There, Mead exhibited works of art depicting women in graveyards.

In April, 2004 an organization exhibition known as “When Love Turns to Poison” occured in the Kunstraum Bethanien in Berlin, showing, among other functions by Mead, the painting “First Breaking of the bread,” that was destroyed throughout the exhibition with a religion-obsessed vandal. The exhibition of eight artists grew to become a nationwide scandal, with conservative newspapers declaring it pornographic and non-art.

Debate also developed around an exhibit of Mead’s work on Hyaena Gallery in Burbank, California in 2008, when four artists connected using the gallery left it in protest against Mead’s exhibition.

In ’09 Mead took part in the exhibition loop “Offentliche Erregung” (Public Arousal), at loop – raum fur aktuelle kunst Berlin, Germany Berlin, Germany Group exhibition that worked particularly using the grey zone where art approaches the pornographic.

This Year Mead’s work was incorporated inside a large exhibition at Rental property Merkel/Bahnwarterhaus in Esslingen, Germany known as “Family Jewels”, by which artist Damien Deroubaix presented a household tree from the artists who’ve influenced his work.